Gov. Ted Strickland has been given a prime speaking spot at the Democratic National Convention to talk about the economy. Strickland told reporters in a conference call that the Barack Obama campaign asked him to speak Tuesday evening at the convention.

The presidential race in Ohio brought Strickland, Obama Ohio campaign manager Aaron Pickrell and national deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand together to make the case that the campaign is covering all bases to win Ohio.

Strickland and Pickrell (who ran the governor's 2006 campaign) said Obama will use the playbook of the Strickland and U.S. Sherrod Brown (D-Lorain).

Strickland said he told Obama campaign leaders in Chicago that there are two ways to run statewide in Ohio: the Kerry strategy, focused on the metropolitan areas, or the "Strickland-Brown" strategy of focusing on all parts of Ohio, specifically suburban cities and counties as well as the rural areas.

"I believe the fact that the Obama campaign has already deployed the field staff they have, and the fact that every part of this state is being targeted, means that Senator Obama will not repeat the Kerry mistake," Strickland said. "I have never seen a presidential campaign in Ohio come anywhere close to where this campaign is, organizationally and in terms of having actual man and woman power in the field."

To reach out to rural and suburban areas, the Obama campaign is recruiting "neighborhood team leaders" to build networks of local volunteers to persuade voters on face-to-face, instead of relying on television advertisements alone. There is one leader for each of the designated 1,200 neighborhoods in Ohio, which contains 5 to 10 precincts, according to Pickrell.

First, the team leader assembles a neighborhood volunteers and then sends them to knock and call on homes to persuade voters. Pickrell said this operation is the heart of the Ohio campaign.

"This is really the crux of it," Pickrell said. "The neighbor to neighbor approach is exactly the way we need to go about it here to win."

Pickrell said office openings in far-flung areas have attracted great enthusiasm from locals, like the 300 who turned out in Lima for the Obama office opening.

For all of the enthusiasm, Strickland said Obama won't win every county, but that isn't the absolute goal.

"I want to be candid with you," Strickland said. "Is Senator Obama going to win every county? Is he going to win every region? Probably not, but in some of these heavily Republican counties, we can go from 29 percent to perhaps 38 percent. And in some counties we can go from 38 percent to 44 percent. So I'm confident that the strategy that's being followed here will be effective because it's going to be an attempt to reach every voter in every part of Ohio."  

However, Strickland said later that he expects Obama to win Hamilton County, a Republican stronghold for decades.

Organizationally the campaign has field directors for each of the 23 regions the campaign has designated in Ohio to ensure a tailored approach to different cities that were once lumped together in the same reason. For instance, Pickrell said, Portsmouth and Cincinnati are not treated as parts of one region but are now dealt with separately.

Hildebrand said Ohio's votes are critical to winning the necessary 270 electoral votes to make Obama president.

"We view Ohio as a very important part of our puzzle to get enough electoral votes to win the presidency for Barack," he said.

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